Malissa Goff Baker creates new mural at Botanic Garden
The Dominion Post
The West Virginia Botanic Garden has a colorful new addition, thanks to area artists.
Working under a request made by WVBG Executive Director Phillip Smith, using money from an Organizational Arts Grant from Your Community Foundation, well-known painter Malissa Goff Baker — with assistance from several dedicated friends — has covered a not-so-pretty structure nestled in the woods with colorful depictions of nature.
And a few supernatural fairies, too.
“We have made several big upgrades to the garden’s service area recently, including a new building and composting facility,” WVBG Executive Director Phillip Smith said. “The metal storage containers that have served us for many years were not exactly beautiful to look at, so with the help of a grant from YCF, we were able to contract Malissa to create a mural. We were impressed by her work on the Mountain People’s Co-Op on Pleasant Street. The new mural features iconic West Virginia plants and animals along with some elements that the WVBG is known for such as the pixie cup lichen and even some fairies.”
Goff Baker said she was excited about the project from the get-go.
“He told me that they had a couple of shipping containers at the park that were considered an eyesore,” Goff Baker said.
So she went looking for ideas and inspiration — and found it in some old homework.
“I worked on preliminary sketches through the summer and finally landed on redesigning a piece that grew from a collage assignment that I received at WVU in a first-year drawing class,” Goff Baker explained. “The assignment was to make a collage — which I had no experience in — and then do a painting of the collage. The original piece was extremely simple and just made by tearing horizontal strips of paper and placing them in a kind of spectrum arrangement that would give the appearance of a sunset in the distance. Then I cut out trees, foliage and a figure in black to place on top as a silhouette against the multicolor background. Typical of most art students, I used what I had around, and all of the colors of scrapbook paper and one bag from Pinocchio’s toy store did not include the color green.
“From the original collage I expanded the painting as a diptych and included a few more figures silhouetted in the foreground.”
What Goff Baker didn’t want was simply a mural of trees, surrounded by trees.
“While I was working on sketches and trying to figure out what kind of a design that talks about the woods and the plants in it, but isn’t a painting of the woods and the plants in it, would work on a non-organic shaped object with repeated vertical lines, I happened to scroll by a detail pic that I had used from the original collage as a profile picture on Facebook. I decided if I could manipulate a few of the original figures and shapes into local animals and plants, changing my general tree design to the state tree — a maple — it would work perfectly to solve the design issues that I was facing.
“I could incorporate symbols of all those plants and animals without doing a painting of the thing next to the thing. The simplistic look of torn paper with a deckled edge going horizontally would take emphasis away from the vertical stripes of the surface of the shipping container. The lack of green in the composition would allow the surrounding forest and grass to complete the piece. My idea was that that would take this box and make it a part of the forest instead of just something sitting in it.”
Incorporated into the design are a family of deer, a great horned owl (“based on the design of a refrigerator magnet that I hold dear that used to be my grandmother’s”), a pair of cardinals, a Monarch butterfly, rhododendrons, maple leaves — and, honoring a request Smith made — fairies and a fairy house.
Goff Baker is quick to note that the work wouldn’t have been possible without the help and support of a lot of good people.
“I do not have transportation of my own, so the team of drivers that took me to the site over the last seven weeks includes my daughter Naomi Porterfield, Keith Strother, Chett Watts, Liz Gordon and Josh Ratliff. Naomi, Keith, and Chett assisted me with the priming and painting. Chett, in particular, helped me design and to apply a few layers of patterned ‘paper,’ and the fairy figures. It was very nice to have these artists working with me.
“Chett and I were the last two out there finishing this painting right up to the last possible day the weather would allow for the paint to cure and not run off in the rain.”
Smith said it’s a great addition to the ever-improving garden.
“Visitors will love the colorful new artwork and we’ll be able to utilize it in our youth education programming as well such as with visual scavenger hunts,” he said.
Goff Baker — who also painted the cardinal mural on Pleasant Street — said she’s thrilled to be part of bringing art to public spaces.
But there are personal benefits, too.
“It was a great thing to get to focus on a beautiful, beloved place during very strange times,” she said.
